E-mail apparatuses, which are capable of transmitting e-mails with attached data files (attachment files), have been widely used in the art. In conventional e-mail however, attachment files are transmitted to all of the designated addresses without exception and, thus, there has been no way to limit attachment files to a portion of the recipients (e.g., one or more "TO addresses" identifying one or more primary recipients). Thus, e-mail with attachment files is transmitted to other addresses as well (i.e., one or more "CC addresses" and/or "BCC addresses" identifying one or more secondary recipients). For the sake of brevity, each of these addresses (TO, CC and BCC) and their identifying recipients (primary, secondary) is generally represented in a plural form unless otherwise specifically noted. Also, for the same reason, these addresses (TO, CC and BCC) or any combinations thereof will be alternatively called "TO, CC, BCC addresses" or "CC/BCC addresses" in a simpler form.
Even if a sender does not feel it necessary to send attachment files to secondary recipients, or the secondary recipients do not feel it necessary to receive information other than the e-mails' body text, such e-mail with attachment files are nevertheless transmitted to all of the recipients. This also leads to undesirable phenomena such as congestion in a network used for transmitting the e-mail and/or overflow of memory for storing the received e-mail.
Japanese Patent Publication 8-251221 discloses a message handling method, wherein recipients' addresses are divided into a plurality of groups set up in e-mail such that text is attached to e-mail for transmission to each of the grouped recipients' addresses. In accordance with this method, however, it is possible to attach text only to e-mail, whereas it is not possible to attach another type of data (e.g., binary data, programs or the like) other than the text data. Also, in this method, it is mandatory to write character patterns for associating the grouped recipients' addresses with the attached text data into the e-mails and, therefore, it becomes much troublesome to create such e-mails in comparison with sole attachment of data files.
Moreover, recipients who are not identified to receive attached text do not know who else received the attached text. Accordingly, except where a sender describes such a fact within the e-mail in an explicit manner, those recipients who receive e-mail without any attached text are unable to know existence of the text even if the recipients need to receive it.